Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.

Tuesday round-up and Open Thread — the “Obama at Chipotle” edition

Apparently the thing that impressed people most about Obama’s visit to Chipotle was the image of him completely ignoring the sanitation barrier so that he could get his burrito exactly the way he wants it. It reminded me of a crude saying about stuck up women: “She thinks her [fecal matter] doesn’t smell.” One gets the feeling, looking at the picture, that Obama is pretty convinced he has no germs others might like to avoid.

Now, onward!

***

Americans have been told that socialized medicine means free mammograms (never mind that nothing is ever free, because someone always has to pay). The reality, as England shows, is that socialized medicine means complete control over the individual. Or, as Charles C.W. Cooke says:

Ultimately, socialized medicine permits those who are in charge of the state to export their mores to the nation at large. What the ruling class likes, it will subsidize; what it does not like, it will prohibit. The Left, for example, will not permit any restrictions whatsoever on sexual behavior — however expensive might be the consequences. Thus is everybody expected to pay the costs of those who behave irresponsibly. But those activities it disdains — smoking, for example? Sorry, but they’re too costly to allow. In this manner is the link between liberty and responsibility broken, and are individual choices reduced to the decisions of a few smug “health experts.”

You can’t socialize medicine without socializing people.

***

Trey Gowdy must have been a kick-ass prosecutor:

***

Walter Russel Mead’s article about ISIS is getting a lot of deserved play because he spells it out: ISIS is al Qaeda’s psychopathic little brother. They’re from the same family, but al Qaeda was the warm-up act for the newest member of the Islamic family network.

Sadie noted an equally important issue Mead raises, which is that one of the reasons we got here is the press’s failure to ride herd on Obama:

One wishes we had a Republican President right now if only because when a Republican is in the White House, the media and the chattering classes believe they have a solemn moral duty to categorize and analyze the failures of American strategy and policy. Today that is far from the case; few in the mainstream press seem interested in tracing the full and ugly course of the six years of continual failure that dog the footsteps of the hapless Obama team in a region the White House claimed to understand.

In a way, our situation is worse than the bad old days when the Russian people had Pravda for their news. Back then, Russians knew that Pravda was the official government mouthpiece, so they viewed with suspicion anything it said.

Here, however, our once free media willingly made itself subordinate to the DemProgs. Because there was never an official coup, too many Americans don’t realize that the drive-by media is a government mouthpiece, and therefore they give it more credence than it deserves.

***

Obama’s push to remake the military into a government funded and controlled organization that exists to police political correctness is proceeding apace. The latest military diktat for the troops under its control is that they must celebrate “Gilbert Month” — a 30 day celebration dedicated to Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Transgendered people. (Apparently the military is so old-fashioned that it isn’t celebrating all 50 of the sexual identities that Facebook has recognized.)

WeaponsMan, writes that he got the following depressing email on the subject: “I have been specifically told that, “If you are not on board with this program, there is no place in the military for you.”

Yup. That’s what our revolutionary ancestors fought for, and that’s why our fathers and grandfathers marched off to war in the 20th century: for the right to force the troops to celebrate the non-heterosexual, non-cisgendered among them or, failing that, to be drummed out for insubordination.

***

Unlike my parents, I never liked the whole Kennedy crowd, starting with John. My European-born parents, including my slum-raised, former Communist father, were snobs, and they thrilled to the pseudo-European airs the Kennedy’s and their acolytes (especially in the media) liked to drape around themselves.

Seth Mandel suggests that it was Kennedy’s aping of European royalty, combined with his decision to allow federal employees to unionize, that led us to the place we are today: with the most expensive first family in the world and a bureaucracy that will do anything, including breaking the law, to preserve and expand its territory.

***

I don’t like Chipmunk-Cheek, pretty boy Brad Pitt. From what I’ve seen though, I do like Stewart Mills, the Republican candidate in Minnesota’s 8th District, and this is true despite the media comparing him to Pitt. Aside from having Pitt hair and a better-than-Brad-Pitt face, Mills seems to be the real deal.

***

This is how a country — say, for example, America — destroys its wealth.

My kids, like most kids today, were not taught Aesop’s fables. They know them a bit, not because they’re part of popular culture anymore, but because I’ve told them the fables. With Aesop’s in mind, it might be worthwhile for our culturally illiterate DemProgs to acquaint themselves with the timeless tale of “The Goose That Laid The Golden Eggs.”

***

Like the rest of you, I was pretty disgusted when I read that Chelsea Clinton, who will inherit her parents $100 million fortune, who married a fabulously wealthy man, who just bought an $11,000,000 apartment while only in her early thirties, and who got paid $600,000 per TV episode working the only job she’s ever held (never mind that she was a failure), has confessed that she just doesn’t care about money. Apparently she’s above filthy lucre.

It’s an impressive house. My parents had millionaire friends, and I’ve lived in Marin long enough to have acquired several millionaire acquaintances, so I’ve been in my fair share of nice houses. Millionaires live in nice houses. But let me tell you something: billionaires live in really nice houses, so nice that they make millionaire houses look kind of cheesy and tacky.

***

Lorie Byrd has a friend, Becky, and Becky has a daughter, Kristen. I haven’t met Kristen, which is clearly my loss. While still in her late teens, Kristen was diagnosed with an incredibly aggressive ovarian cancer. Rather than giving up on life, it has made her live life harder. She’s now 21 and still living with gusto. What an admirable young woman.

***

Have you ever heard of Giogio Perlasca? There’s a reason you haven’t. At war’s end, after he rescued more than 5,000 Hungarian Jews from the Nazis, he returned to Italy and never breathed a word about what he’d done. He didn’t even tell his family. It was only in 1987, when some of the Jews he’d saved went looking for him that his generosity and courage came to life. He’s recognized in Israel as One of the Righteous Among Nations, and is the subject of an Italian movie, Perlasca, un Eroe Italiano.

***

And now it all comes together…. Why did the IRS allow documents it knew Congress was looking for to vanish forever? Because Obamacare:

More to follow. I’m only now getting the chance to catch up on today’s stories.

Share this:

If your five year old child was six feet tall, he’d do the exact same thing at Chipotle that Obama is doing; just as if a five year old was left unattended in an LA Fitness gym, he’d probably start playing around with the weights and look just as serious as Obama did in that video.

That may the missing piece in the Obama puzzle — he’s basically a five year old

SADIE

If only Chipotle had put up a “red line” instead of sneeze guard, …..

http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com Ymarsakar

It’s very easy to compare this video to the Ryan emotional reaction to the same K admin. In the Ryan video, K was cool and under no pressure, because K knew Ryan had no clue what was really going on, what happened to the evidence, or how to recover the HD data.

Vs Trey, however, K seems to be considering and thinking about tactical options.

weathtd

Gods do not concern themselves with potential infections in mere mortals.
I actually enjoyed watching Gowdy. Now it is well past time to start putting these arrogant IRS slugs in PRISON.

Ron19

Obama has to reach over the sneeze guard and point straight down, because even the young people working on the serving line don’t believe a word he says!

I seem to remember Ms. Clinton getting a job with a hedge firm shortly after graduation from college. Her starting salary, IIRC, was $100,000/year, in spite of the fact she had no experience, and her degree from Stanford was in history.

The assumption (in the conservative media, anyway) was that she got the job because of who she was related to. And it was pointed out that GWB’s daughters taught in lower income schools after graduation, not at Wall Street firm.

Writing this blog is a labor of love. However, if you'd like to donate money for my efforts, please feel free to do so: